


crossing paths with broken hearts

by lunarchoerry



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, F/F, LOONAVERSE Universe, essentially love4eva but with hyerim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25747390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarchoerry/pseuds/lunarchoerry
Summary: hyejoo is tired of being left behind.  she decides enough is enough. if they want to make her the bad guy, she'll show them what a real villain is.but then, maybe the stranger in the forest will change her story.-love4eva + hyerim
Relationships: Choi Yerim | Choerry/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	crossing paths with broken hearts

**Author's Note:**

> needed to write some hyerim content to refresh my inspiration for my fic, lol. happy to finally post again :')  
> set in the loonaverse au, but ofc i have made some changes.  
> hope you enjoy :)

There’s been a shift happening between the girls in Class One. It had been happening for a while, but Hyejoo had noticed it too late to change anything.

It starts with Sooyoung, as everything in their small group does. Sooyoung had begun sneaking out of class, skipping study hall, and worst of all missing practice sessions. It was difficult to pretend not to notice her absence when the instructors would come looking for her, but no one knew where she would go anyway so it wasn’t like it helped.

Of course, anything Sooyoung would do caught Jiwoo’s attention. She couldn’t help but be curious about where Sooyoung would go, what she was doing. Soon, she was missing just as often as Sooyoung was.

It was when Chaewon started following along that Hyejoo started becoming suspicious. Chaewon had always been closest with Hyejoo from the moment they’d all first met, and now suddenly she’s sneaking away without a word to meet up with Sooyoung and Jiwoo.

Hyejoo figured she would become part of whatever they were doing too. But after enough time of being excluded, Hyejoo realized she’s being isolated.

For the last few weeks, Hyejoo has silently observed as the other girls in her class whisper to themselves and sneak out of the dorms without her. They’ve been making plans about something, she can overhear them earnestly coming up with ideas to leave the campus, and they’re purposefully leaving her out. Their laughing and talking hushes to soft whispers behind their hands the instant they notice Hyejoo. The most she receives are furtive glances as the three girls Hyejoo once called her friends ensure she can’t listen in. Not that it matters—Hyejoo is good at eavesdropping.

They’ve been spending more and more time outside in the forest beyond campus. She watches them run through the courtyard from the study room windows, hears them laugh and giggle until they’re out of sight beyond the treeline. She tries to ignore it, but it makes her hands tremble with the anger she feels. Hyejoo has thought about telling the headmaster about their missed schedules, but she’s continued to pretend she doesn’t know where they go.

But then one day, as she eavesdrops outside the study room, Hyejoo hears Sooyoung make an announcement. “This time, we’re leaving for good.”

 _Leaving_? Hyejoo’s heart catches in her throat. They’re leaving? Is that what they’ve been planning all this time? And they still haven’t told her _anything_? Sooyoung is just going to lead them away without any warning—without so much as a goodbye. And Hyejoo is going to be left all alone.

Anger simmers deep inside her, ready to boil and overflow, and yet she still keeps quiet. She doesn’t tell anyone about the girls’ plans to leave. Hyejoo doesn’t know what causes her to bite her tongue, whether it’s some strange sense of loyalty or figuring out her own plan. She can’t help herself, though, as she corners Chaewon after lessons one day.

Chaewon is nervous as Hyejoo leads her into an empty practice room. It doesn’t stop her from pressing, “We’re friends, right? You’d tell me if anything was going on, _right_?” She’s exasperated and desperate in a way that only Chaewon has been able to help her out of. Surely Chaewon wouldn’t leave her like this, right? She cares enough to at least warn Hyejoo.

The other girl looks at her, eyes wide as she purses her lips. “Of course, Hyejoo,” she says in that soft, reassuring tone she uses to placate her. “Don’t worry.”

Hyejoo wants to believe her. Unfortunately, Chaewon has never been a good liar. Her answer only proves to shatter her trust and sever the straining bond between them. Her upset must show on her face as Chaewon’s composure starts to crumble with guilt, but Hyejoo quickly turns on her heel to leave before she can say anything else.

The day they leave, Hyejoo is silent. She’s already been quiet for a long time, since this divide between her and them started, but today she doesn’t utter a single word. What would be the point when there’s no one to talk to? She might as well get used to being alone.Hyejoo is alone

The girls wait until after lessons to make their escape. They don’t take anything with them, not that they would have much to bring in the first place. Hyejoo watches them from the balcony as the three girls excitedly race for the forest, one after another with Sooyoung leading them. Only Chaewon looks back, pausing to stare up at Hyejoo, her gaze unreadable. There’s a moment of hope then, that Chaewon won’t let her be left behind. But she shakes out of it, and quickly catches up to Sooyoung and Jiwoo ahead of her. Hyejoo’s stomach sinks low with crushed hopes and heartbreak.

It’s in that moment, her anger and fear finally taking over, that she decides she won’t be left behind.

She storms down through the castle and into the courtyard, uncaring if she’s seen. The others should hope she’s caught before she finds them. Nothing could stop her rage now, not even the headmaster herself.

For better or worse, she isn’t discovered as she makes her way into the forest. She’s never been further than the courtyard, and she realizes she has no idea which way the girls went. But her anger keeps her undeterred, and she tries her best to navigate the forest alone.

It’s an impossible task. The paths she tries lead nowhere and running through the trees has her more lost than before. It feels like walking in circles, though nothing is familiar as she continues to search. She stumbles over roots and rocks as she walks, directionless. There’s no sign of the other girls, no footprints or even signs of disturbed twigs on the ground. They’re gone.

Hyejoo is alone.

She keeps running until her foot snags on a particularly large root she hadn’t noticed and falls to the forest floor. It’s hopeless, she realizes, and now she has no idea how to get back to the school. Her friends abandoned her, and now she’s _lost_. She can hope someone stumbles across her, but perhaps being dragged back to an empty castle is a worse fate than perishing here.

For the first time, she feels tears burning at her eyes. What did she do to deserve being left behind? How could the other girls be so cruel? It had been just the four of them from the moment they’d all been brought here. The only way they had survived was because they were there for each other. Why was it Hyejoo being left behind? Why couldn’t they stay together?

All this time she’s been fighting back her emotions as she’s dealt with the sudden isolation she’s found herself in. Everything has been channeled into her anger, the only negative emotion is isn’t ashamed to feel. The loneliness, fear of abandonment, confusion, hurt—it’s all been pushed aside as she refused to deal with it. And now, it hits her all at once.

She chokes on the wave of sadness that envelopes her, heaving a painful sob she’d tried for so long to hold back. The outburst surprises her, but it’s too late to stop it. Though, she finds now that she doesn’t care. What would be the point? She’s alone, after all. No one is going to care if she curls up on the dirt ground and cries her heart out. And for a while, that’s all she does.

With only the company of her loneliness, Hyejoo finally allows herself to fall into the fear she’s been fighting back.

After her crying begins to die down, she comes back to herself with embarrassment. It’s unbelievable that she let herself slip like that. She sniffles and begins to shuffle her body into an upright sitting position. As she lifts her eyes, she freezes as she sees a pair of legs standing in front of her. Hyejoo whips her head up, and she’s shocked to find a girl standing there in front of her, watching her with concern.

“Are you okay?”

Hyejoo scoffs nervously. “Do I look okay?” she snaps, pushing herself away. How hadn’t she noticed the stranger approach? She starts to stand, but the strange girl thrusts out her hand.

“Need help?” she asks, looking at her earnestly.

“Who are you?” Hyejoo frowns, swatting the girl’s hand away and standing up on her own. “It’s creepy to just stand around watching someone cry.” Now that they’re on even ground, Hyejoo gets a better look at her. The girl seems curious and well-meaning, her expression honest and worried. She’s wearing purple denim shorts and a white t-shirt, instantly informing Hyejoo she isn’t from the school. The girl is a stranger she’s never met before, though oddly Hyejoo realizes something about her is eerily familiar.

She can’t place it, but a faint feeling of nostalgia tugs at her, the familiarity urging her closer. But Hyejoo shakes it off.

The girl pouts, shrugging her shoulders. “I wasn’t watching… I just heard crying and came over to help.” She gives Hyejoo her own once over. “My name is Yerim. What’s yours?”

 _Yerim_ . Hyejoo rolls the name around in her head a few times before deciding she doesn’t recognize it. “I’m Hyejoo. Do you go to school here?”

Yerim blinks in surprise. “This is a school? I didn’t even know.” She frowns again as she glances around the forest. “I’m not really… from here,” she says decisively. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I keep waking up in weird places.”

Hyejoo’s frown deepens. “What does that mean?”

She looks pensive for a moment. “I honestly don’t know. I just know that I was home, and then I fell asleep and woke up in a different weird place before falling asleep again and waking up here.” Yerim hesitates, like she’s also unsure of her own story. “I think… I have some kind of weird powers, but I can’t control them very well.”

Her expression is troubled, and though Hyejoo is wary of her story, she finds herself believing the other girl. “Well,” she says, “Where are you from?”

Yerim glances at her, the tense line of her shoulders relaxing. “Jeju Island,” she responds.

Hyejoo’s brows furrow together. “’Jeju’? I don’t know where that is.”

Yerim looks surprised. “In South Korea?” Hyejoo shakes her head—she’s never heard of Korea either. “Oh wow. Where are we?”

“Eden,” Hyejoo answers easily. Yerim’s frown deepens with worry.

“I don’t know where that is,” she admits nervously.

“Do you know how to get home?” Hyejoo asks, and Yerim shakes her head. _Oh_. Suddenly Hyejoo’s own problems seem minor in comparison. “So you don’t know how to control whatever is making you wake up in different places?”

Yerim shakes her head, looking thoughtful. “No, but… maybe there’s a reason I’m here?” She looks to the other strangely, her eyes wide with some kind of realization only she understands. “Maybe I was meant to find you.”

It’s dumb, but Hyejoo’s heart skips a beat at the thought. Someone meant to find her… She thought the others had been meant for her. Sooyoung, Jiwoo, Chaewon—all this time, had they not been hers? But how could she belong to anyone but them? She can’t even remember her life before she’d known them.

And yet, they left her. Clearly they didn’t feel like they belonged to her.

Anger surges in her chest again remembering the look on Chaewon’s face as she’d turned away from Hyejoo for the final time. Right, she doesn’t want them anymore—not in the same way she had before.

But here’s Yerim, alone and unsure and clearly needing someone to guide her. Sweet Yerim, already so trusting with a stranger she stumbled across in an unfamiliar forest. With unknown abilities, Hyejoo could use that to get back at the others. Hyejoo could use someone like her. Yerim could help her get what she wants.

Hyejoo smiles softly. “I’ll help you figure out how to get home. We can figure out your ability together.”

Yerim brightens up, surprised but visibly relieved. “Really? You’d help me?”

“Of course,” Hyejoo nods, holding out her hand to the other girl. “You’ll have to help me too, though.”

The girl beams happily, taking Hyejoo’s hand. “Sounds fair to me!”

“Perfect,” Hyejoo murmurs, intertwining their fingers together. An inexplicable wave of energy flows through her. Their hands fit perfectly. “Let’s go back to the school.”

Hyejoo turns to attempt to retrace her own steps to the school, and when she looks back, she finds a new path that hadn’t been there before. She already knows where it leads. Without a word, she pulls Yerim along behind her. In only moments, a considerably shorter amount of time than Hyejoo had spent running around the forest earlier, she finds them back in the familiar courtyard of the school.

She squeezes Yerim’s hand tight, “We have to hurry before someone sees you.” Wide-eyed, Yerim nods, and the pair rush into the castle without a look back, neither noticing the way their path disappears behind the brush.

Hyejoo sneaks Yerim through the castle, quietly leading her up the winding staircases and into the large dormitory room Hyejoo had shared with the others. She breathes a sigh of relief once she’s got Yerim safely hidden. “Okay,” she says, “The instructors don’t tend to check our rooms until curfew, so we should be safe here for now.”

“Is it dangerous for me to be here?” Yerim asks, her voice nothing more than a whisper, scared.

“It’s just dangerous to look like an outsider,” she reassures. “I’ll find a uniform for you.” Yerim nods as Hyejoo turns around to dig through her wardrobe. Yerim is a bit smaller than her, and Hyejoo thinks her own uniforms might not fit. She glances to the other three wardrobes in the bedroom. The other girls wouldn’t miss anything they left behind—they left for good, after all. Without any more regard for the others’ property, Hyejoo crosses the room to grab one of Chaewon’s uniforms. She finds a white button up and, surprisingly, a lavender plaid skirt. She’s puzzled by the skirt, as she’d never seen Chaewon wear it. But it’s oddly fitting, she thinks as she glances back to the girl in purple behind her.

Yerim is sitting on Sooyoung’s bed as Hyejoo approaches her. She offers a sort of half smile as she hands the clothes to the other girl. “Does this work?”

“I think it’ll fit,” Yerim nods, looking curiously at the purple skirt. “This is pretty.”

“It’ll look good on you,” Hyejoo agrees, biting back an embarrassed smile as Yerim grins at her.

“I’ll go try it on,” she says, and Hyejoo points her to the bathroom to change.

With this moment alone, Hyejoo sinks down onto her bed and sighs. How had she ended up like this, ditched by her only friends and now babysitting a strange girl that teleports in her sleep? Is this even real?

Glancing at the empty beds around her, she knows at least part of it is real. Even in her darkest nightmares, she’d never dreamed of her friends leaving her behind with such finality. She’d never felt such strong anger and loneliness. She can verify Yerim’s existence later. For now, she takes this time to rest her eyes.

It doesn’t take long for Yerim to return. She hides behind the door, smiling shyly at Hyejoo before slowly slipping back into the bedroom. “How does it look?” she asks, smoothing the skirt down with her hands.

Sitting back up, Hyejoo admits, the lavender was a good choice. Of course Yerim had been pretty before, it isn’t a drastic change, but something about her in this uniform makes her seem softer, has something in Hyejoo’s chest squeezing tight in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Hyejoo shakes off these feelings. “It’s pretty,” she says honestly, and that’s all she’s brave enough to say.

Yerim walks over, and Hyejoo moves to the edge of her bed to make room for them to sit together. The air in the room is still, silent. It’s like time has stopped as both girls are lost in thought. Hyejoo can’t tear her eyes from Yerim, whether it’s her clothes or her face. Something about her is painfully familiar, begging Hyejoo to remember. But she can only blankly watch as Yerim continues to pick at and adjust that lavender skirt. Hyejoo’s head hurts.

She breaks through her own thoughts, asking, “What are you thinking about?”

The other girl shrugs, not looking up. “Not much… Wondering what my friends are doing now. We were supposed to have a party…” She looks forlorn then, and it’s the first time she’s expressed any sort of sadness at her situation. But it’s easily brushed aside, “I hope they went ahead and met up without me. I’m sure they’re having fun.”

“You’re going along with this really easily,” Hyejoo points out bluntly, gently pushing.

This earns her a small smile. “I guess it feels like I’m in a dream or something. Maybe I am, and when I wake up next I’ll be home again.”

Hyejoo scoffs, but realizes it isn’t improbable. Yerim said her ability has her waking up in new places. Suddenly Hyejoo is uncomfortable with the thought that her new friend could be gone the next morning. “Do you want to leave?”

Yerim looks up at her, appearing as if she’s appraising Hyejoo. Their gazes lock for several moments, making some kind of connection Hyejoo isn’t sure she’s prepared for. And then Yerim breaks eye contact, shaking her head. “No. Not until I help you.” An then she’s back to messing with her skirt as Hyejoo’s heart beats hard in her chest with inexplicable nervousness.

There’s a sudden, rapt knock at the door, and both girls jump as it swings open. One of the teachers walks into the room, and Hyejoo’s heart jumps into her throat. She scrambles to her feet, trying to block Yerim from view. “M-Ms. Adami…”

“Hyejoo,” the blonde woman greets plainly, raising an eyebrow in suspicion. “And… Yerim.” She nods appraisingly, stunning both girls. “Good. I’m glad you’re both on time for curfew. Start getting ready for bed, alright? It’s almost time for lights out.”

Hyejoo’s gaze snaps over to the window. It had just been early evening only moments ago, but now the sun is already dipping low behind the horizon. When had it gotten so late?

“Of—of course,” Hyejoo nods, glancing to Yerim who is still sitting shell-shocked on the bed. She turns back to her instructor. “Um, but what about the others?”

The woman gives her an unimpressed look. “What others, Hyejoo? It’s just you two.” She shakes her head and leaves without another word.

The two girls look at each other with wide eyes. “She knew me,” Yerim whispers. “Why did she know me?”

Hyejoo shakes her head. “I don’t know.” If she did, she might understand why the others left.

Eden has adapted.

**Author's Note:**

> i had this idea of changing some elements of the loonaverse, sort of in some "what if" scenarios. i have a few plans for changing up different stories within the universe, so let me know if you're interested in seeing more?  
> talk to me about hyerim on twitter if you want [@lunarchoerry](https://twitter.com/lunarchoerry)


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